Constantia Parikh, a joint venture between one of Europe's largest packaging firm and Gujarat based Parikh Packaging, which recently expanded its Moraiya facility near Ahmedabad, is eyeing acquisitions to expand its geographic footprint in the country and be closer to its clients.

Pavan Parikh, director, Parikh Packaging, said that the company was open to looking for acquisitions in the near future. "Constantia is focussing on the Indian market, which shows high growth potential and we are open to take over some local companies in the future as well," he said adding that the move would be mainly a strategic initiative to be closer to its clients. The company's clientelle in India includes big names like Pepsico, Marico, Britannia, Dabur, Unilever, Parle among others, and according to Parikh they would be looking at targets in South and North India to be close to their clients.

As for the target size of acquisition, he did not wish to share much details, maintaining that it is a cash-rich company and had no issues in funding the acquisition.

French investment group Wendel has acquired a majority stake in Constantia Flexibles in a $ 2.8 billion deal recently. According to Parikh, the move was going to further bolster its prospects in India as the family led PE firm Wendel has big plans for emerging markets, especially India.

The company recently invested around Rs 50 crore to expand its Moraiya facility to 1600 tonnes per month (tpm) from an earlier 1100 tpm. As Parikh said that harldy 5-6 per cent of food products in India are packaged, and hence there was huge scope for growth here. The firm has been clocking a steady growth rate of 25-26 per cent over the past few years and has touched a turnover of Rs 235 crore last fiscal. Nearly 70 per cent of its revenues come from the food segment and Parikh hoped that with the patent expiry in regulated markets, the demand for exports of generic drugs from India which houses many contract manufacturers would boost the pharmaceutical packaging segment as well.

It is targeting to clock a 25 per cent growth in FY16 as well. Austria based Constantia has 42 plants across the world and is the fourth largest packaging firm globally, and the second largest in Europe. Vienna-headquartered Constantia Flexibles Group had picked up a 60 per cent stake in Ahmedabad's Parikh Packaging Pvt Ltd for an undisclosed amount in 2013. The remaining stake is with the Parikh family which is in the business of non-ferrous metals and warehousing.

 

Source : http://www.business-standard.com/

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